Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:51 amPosts: 8123Location: United States of New England

how much time off did people's husbands/partners take off for the arrival of a new baby??

my husband just had his yearly review yesterday and they told him they were going to give him an extra week off when the baby arrives, so basically a week of paternity leave not taken out of his vacation (they are SO nice!!!)so i was asking him yesterday how much time he was thinking of taking off TOTAL (ie taking paternity leave PLUS vacation time) and he seemed confused/stumped.

i said i thought 3 weeks was a good idea. he has the time. he never takes sick days......ever. he never takes time off unless we actually go somewhere on vacation which was usually once a year for a week and then a short weekend in the summer. also he works like 5 mins from home, he is an electrical engineer, and has access to work stuff on his cell phone and laptop so worst comes to worst he can work from home a bit or go in for a bit if needed during that time off.

he seemed to think 3 weeks was excessive but i dont think he quite grasps what having a newborn will be like (i dont grasp it either but i know having us both there will be better!)

my feeling is if he is able to do it then he should. i dont think they will put up a fuss about taking 3 weeks off if he is available via phone/email. they may say how bout 2 weeks but we havent even asked yet!

Here they are allowed 3wks off at 75% pay, or 5wks off at 50% pay. Or if they want to, parents can take a parental leave of 12months total and split it between the two, instead of the mother's full 12month maternity leave.

My husband will be getting his 3wks off on Jan 6th. Yay! Can't wait!

_________________~SARAH~

“I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.”

Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:51 amPosts: 8123Location: United States of New England

ive been mulling this over in my head. he works for a very small company. there are 5 of them total including the 2 owners.my husband is the main hardware engineer. one of the owners also is an engineer but if he's doing my husband's job then he's not doing his job and other stuff so maybe 3 weeks is asking a bit much out of a small company to have their main engineer not there.

plus after that if something arises and i need him at home he can just come home for a bit and go back. they are really lenient about that. i know after i had major surgery they let him come and go as he needed if i needed help.

My partner took 3 weeks, none of which was paid because he does freelance work. We figured we're already broke, and our baby would only be a tiny newborn once. We wanted to get used to being parents together. I felt like it was just the right amount of time for me to feel confident taking care of her alone, which was good because he then worked pretty much every day for the rest of the summer. If you can make three weeks happen, I say go for it!

Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:51 amPosts: 8123Location: United States of New England

i think that is what we are going to plan on. i would LOVE to have him home for 3 weeks but i think i need to be realistic/reasonable with his work since they have always been really good to him/us AND they will be our only source of income at that point! hahahaa!

im very happy he works for a company that will be lenient when needed and he works so close to home. i feel very lucky!

My husband got 10 days (that includes weekends). He probably could've added some vacation time onto that, but at the time his supervisor was fairly new and was the kind of guy himself who was back in the office the day their second baby was born. So my husband got calls several times a day about work stuff and had to log in to check and respond to emails several hours each day he was "off."

I felt like it was really necessary to have someone help out during the whole jaundice/constant pumping/feeding debacle. When my husband went back to work, it was helpful to have my MIL visit, because I felt awfully restricted in what I was able to do for myself. After ~3 weeks I felt like I could manage it, though.

H was born on a Tuesday, and my husband called out that day and stayed out until the following Monday. When I went back to work at 9 weeks, he stayed home with the little guy for three months, using up the sick time he'd been accruing for the past seven or so years. It was awesome because we didn't have to worry about childcare for five months and my job was super stingy with maternity leave.

I think a lot depends on what kind of delivery you have, other support you have around you and what your baby is like. My husband stayed home 3 weeks after I had a c section which was really nice. I needed a lot of help with everything and we didn't have any other family or support around. Also Baby Zoey never slept so we were both beyond exhausted all the time. If she had been a better sleeper or a more easy going baby I think I would have been fine on my own sooner than that. Can he ask for 3 weeks off and then go back after 2 weeks if things are going well?

Mr. Scandi took 2 weeks off--which is standard here--when tiny wu was born, but that included the 2-day delivery and the 2 days afterward when we were in the hospital. Since then he's been working from home one day a week.

Danish law gives him 12 weeks off at full pay, but that can only be used after tiny wu is 4 months old, but less than a year old. And the university requires that he plan it in advance and notify them of his plans. So he has asked for 2 3 week chunks off in the spring, both during times when my work will be busy, and then 6 weeks in the late summer.

Randomly, in Denmark you get a bonus vacation day on your child(ren)'s birthday, up to your 4th kid. Good news for us, bad news for anyone who has 5 or more kids!

My husband runs his own business, so he structured his time to be around in the mornings and help me get stuff managed. It was a huge help. L's birth wasn't as hard on me physically as it could have been so I didn't nee someone there 24/7. I imagine that if you had a more invasive procedure or involved recovery, having your partner or someone else to help would be crucial. She slept a ton and was really immobile, so it was easy to just leave her in the middle of the bed and shower or go to the loo.

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

My husband doesn't get any type of paternity leave. With Reno he was off the day of birth, which was a Friday and we came home on the Sunday before Labor Day so he was off anyway. I believe he tried working from home whichever was his next work day but I told him to just go to work..I didn't need him home plus my Maa was close by.

For Miles I had a c-section on a Friday and we came home on Memorial Day. He might have taken a day or two after that off as vacation time due to my immobility with the c-section. If I had a vaginal birth I probably would have sent him to work. Like t'lish says above...most newborns sleep all day. I don't need my husband around "bothering" me. :)

Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:51 amPosts: 8123Location: United States of New England

dang it! im moving to Denmark! if the dad gets TWELVE WEEKS how much does the mom get?????

im on my way!the CEO of the company i work for is originally from Denmark so ill ask him where a good spot for liberal hippies is. (im guessing somewhere where he didnt live since he definitely doesnt fall into that category!)

My husband wasn't working when I gave birth and still isn't (well, now he's parenting). I think you kind of figure out how to deal with whatever situation you've got to deal with. I was a total basket case when I came home and I also couldn't walk right for a couple weeks (pumped full of fluids during an induction with an epidural - took a really long time for my joints to go back to normal functioning). I was barely functional, so I don't know if I could've handled my husband going back to work the next day, the next week, even the next month. (We also don't have a living situation that makes being non-functional work very well - no laundry in the house for example.) But then again, I *could* be non-functional because he was around to help. If he hadn't been, I'm sure I would've figured it out or leaned on family more (which I wasn't keen on doing). For whatever reason, it was a lot easier for me to be at work at 6 weeks than at home taking care of the baby and because my husband had been through it all, he was more competent than I was at baby care, so that's a major upside. However much time your husband winds up taking off - let him do lots and lots of baby care while he's home so he feels like he's good at it!

JENNA wrote:

With Reno he was off the day of birth, which was a Friday and we came home on the Sunday before Labor Day so he was off anyway.

This explains why Reno and Malka get along so well - Malka was born on Labor Day.

dang it! im moving to Denmark! if the dad gets TWELVE WEEKS how much does the mom get?????

im on my way!the CEO of the company i work for is originally from Denmark so ill ask him where a good spot for liberal hippies is. (im guessing somewhere where he didnt live since he definitely doesnt fall into that category!)

12 months here in Canada :-)

_________________~SARAH~

“I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.”

Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:51 amPosts: 8123Location: United States of New England

if we're going to be technical im not as nice and blonde as i used to be.i have a good 3 inches of dirty blonde roots that are driving me nuts but i dont want to dye my hair so it's only going to get worse though.

BabyPunk will be massively blonde though. i had white hair when i was a toddler and my husband is fair. he has brown hair with blonde and red highlights in the summer.

My husband took three weeks (well, Sven came late so he had to go back a few days before 3 weeks were up because there was stuff at work he had scheduled ahead of time and couldn't reschedule/miss). He had to use vacation time but he has so much unused vacation it didn't matter.

I think three weeks was just about perfect. I had a pretty easy birth, all things considered, and was healed up enough that I could get around just find by myself. It was enough time to figure out enough baby care stuff and routine that I felt like I could handle it on my own. In your situation, LisaPunk, I think two weeks would probably be fine since he is so accessible!

Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:51 amPosts: 8123Location: United States of New England

i think 2 weeks will be good too if there is nothing crazy about the birth. obviously if i have to have a c-section or have mobility issues we will have to rethink but hopefully that wont happen.i do wish he could take the 3 though. i understand why it's not realistic but i think it would be great if he could!

dang it! im moving to Denmark! if the dad gets TWELVE WEEKS how much does the mom get?????

im on my way!the CEO of the company i work for is originally from Denmark so ill ask him where a good spot for liberal hippies is. (im guessing somewhere where he didnt live since he definitely doesnt fall into that category!)

Denmark is tiny and quite liberal compared to the US, but it's impossible to move here if you're not European..

ScandinaVegan wrote:

Randomly, in Denmark you get a bonus vacation day on your child(ren)'s birthday, up to your 4th kid. Good news for us, bad news for anyone who has 5 or more kids!

Are you sure about this? I've never heard about it, and considering the amount of parents (including the dude I live with) i know, it seems unlikely that it's a general rule. I couldn't find anything on google either? Although, the danish workers rights seem quite awesome compared to having to worry about income/sick days/vacation etc. in the US. Also, the cheap(ish) kindergarden system is awesome.

We're lucky enough to live in California, which has pretty good family leave laws. When the first boy was born, I took a full six weeks, although after 3 or 4 weeks I started going back to work for a couple of days a week. After six weeks I was back to full-time. I burned vacation time for most of it, though. I didn't have the same sort of thing when the second boy was born, so I burned more vacation time. I took 2 full weeks and then was back to work pretty much full-time after that.

I am jealous of European countries where you all that time for of bonding leave, with pay, but I realize that's probably socialism and I should be disdainful instead.

I think its kind of sad how our society pushes men out of the bonding process. A friend of mine was legally entitled to 4 weeks of paternity leave and took every week, despite open comments from his boss that he should reconsider. He ended up getting pushed out of his job.

Another friend of mine was told that it really wasn't important to be home for his kids, because anything he could do his inlaws or a home healthcare aide could do. It just seemed sort of insane. But then you realize that the people we both worked for had no idea what their kids' birthdays were or how old they were.

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.